My Luna Bond Faded After My Mate’s Betrayal

I woke up at 2 AM and reached for him out of habit.

The sheets on his side were cold. Not just empty — cold, the way they get when someone has been gone for hours. I lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rain hit the pack house windows in long, uneven sheets. Pacific Northwest storms have a particular sound. Heavy and relentless, like they're trying to say something.

Then I smelled it.

Cedar and rain — Boston's scent, the one that used to make my wolf press forward against my ribs like she was trying to get closer. But threaded through it tonight was something else. Something warm and floral, soft in the way that only comes from skin contact, from hours of proximity. Another she-wolf's scent, woven so deep into his that it hadn't faded on the pillow yet.

My wolf didn't stir. She hadn't stirred in weeks.

The silence inside my chest was the loudest thing in the room.

I sat up slowly. His phone was on the nightstand, screen still lit — he'd left in a hurry, then. Boston never left his phone unlocked. I looked at it for a long moment before I picked it up.

One text thread. Evelynn Moreno.

The last message, sent at 11:52 PM, read: *Landed. Terminal B.*

I set the phone down exactly as I found it. Same angle, same position. Then I walked to the small desk in the corner where Boston kept the pack house security tablet and pulled up the sign-out log.

*Boston Russell. 11:47 PM. Pack patrol — eastern boundary.*

The airport is west. Forty minutes west, on a clear night. Longer in this rain.

I went back to bed. I lay in the dark with my eyes open and the rain coming down and his scent still on the pillow beside me, and I did not sleep.

---

In the morning he was back. Showered, dressed, moving through the bedroom with the easy confidence of a man who has never once been questioned. He kissed the top of my head and told me he'd gotten in late, that the eastern patrol had run long, that I should eat something before my supplements.

"I'll take them in a minute," I said.

He nodded and went downstairs.

I waited until I heard the shower running again — he always showered twice on patrol nights, a habit I'd never thought about before — and then I opened my supplement case.

The capsules were the same size they'd always been. Same white casing. I'd been taking them every morning for eight months, ever since I became Luna. Wolfsbane-regulation supplements, standard issue for she-wolves in bonded pairs. The pack healer before Evelynn had prescribed them. I'd never looked closely.

I looked closely now.

I twisted one open over the bathroom counter.

The powder inside was pale. Almost white. I stared at it for a long moment, trying to remember what it used to look